Pleasure Cruise to Tragedy

It was an hour after sunset, 7:45 on the evening of September 3, 1878. It had been a warm humid day, and the darkness dropping over the Thames brought a sudden chill to the 900 or so happy and tired passengers on board the pleasure paddle steamer Princess Alice, as it beat upriver to from Sheerness and . Her captain, William Grinstead, threaded his course between strings of moored barges, steaming against a fast ebb tide, hugging the South shore, as he came up Barking Reach. In the distance he could clearly see the white masthead light of the iron- hulled, screw-driven collier Bywell Castle, coming the other way down Gallions Reach and nearing Tripcock Point where the river curved. The Bywell Castle's green starboard light became visible as they took the bend and, as the gap between the two closed, a sudden hush seemed to settle over the Princess Alice. Both vessels turned towards each other as though on a pre-arranged collision course. The massive iron bows of the collier cut straight into the paddle steamer’s mid section, just in front of the starboard paddle box. The stern rose as the vessel folded in the middle, pulled down by the sheer weight of her boilers. Screaming with fear, those passengers who could reach the decks spilled into the oily water. The river became black with a coating of people treading on each other in their desperate struggle for life. Despite a small boat operation, launching of life-boats from the Bywell Castle and the arrival of the Princess Alice’s sister ship, the Duke of Teck, only 10 minutes later, the accident claimed more than 600 lives, and left a query as to its cause that has yet to be satisfactorily answered.

The Princess Alice The Princess Alice was a long (220’), slim (20’), Clyde-built wooden paddle steamer, one of 11 owned and operated by the London Steamboat Company. She weighed in at 251 tons and her draught was a mere 8’ 4”. She had been built in 1865 with two 140hp engines but carried only two lifeboats and twelve lifebuoys. When she had set off on her trip down the Thames at 10 o'clock that September morning, she was in tip-top condition. Only months before, she had been given a major refit with new boilers and overhauled engines. The summer of 1878 had been very wet, but this September day was so bright and sunny that this excursion was a sell-out, and the Princess Alice was carrying nearly 1,000 passengers, her limit under her Board of Trade Certificate for "smooth water operation". The ‘smooth water area’ was deemed to extend downriver as far as Gravesend, where the majority would disembark.

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Rosherville Gardens A major stopping point was 's Rosherville Pier, the entrance to Rosherville Gardens. This renowned 20 acre public pleasure garden operated from 1837 until 1913, although going distinctly down-market as the nineteenth century wore on. In ’s first full length operetta, The Sorceror, first performed 17th November 1877, ten month’s before our tragic day, the strange central character John Wellington Wells, who confesses to being a lifelong dropper of H’s and who favours eating peas with his knife, confesses to his accidental paramour, Lady Sangazure, that he often goes to Rosherville. Underlining her complete infatuation with this ridiculous creature, and probably with a sly wink at her smart upper middle class London audience, Lady S assures him that ‘That joy I’ll share!’ In 1878, the gardens contained such aesthetic delights as a bear-pit, aviary, zoo, botanical gardens, a maze, tea-rooms and many side shows. In the evenings, the area was illuminated and dances held in the banqueting hall. There was a ‘Bijou’ theatre which seated 1,000 people, and an open-air theatre where many famous variety artistes of the day appeared, and attractions such as fireworks, tightrope walkers, balloon ascents and a gypsy fortune-teller. And large quantities of shrimps and beer. Many of the Princess Alice’s passengers would have gone no further, but would have walked through the tunnel from Rosherville Pier to spend all day in the Gardens. They are now completely gone, a cleared site since 2010, having been part of W T Henley’s Cable Works for most of the twentieth century.

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The Voyage Upriver The gardens were so crowded that, at 18:10, when the Princess Alice left for her upriver trip, there was a mad scramble to catch the ferry back to London. As she sailed from Rosherville that evening, she was again packed to capacity with between 900 and 1,000 merrymakers on board - a band playing music hall favourites, children running up and down the gangways, young couples trying to dance - a perfect vision of hell! As the sun began to go down, the three running lights were lit: red on the port (left) side, green on the starboard, and white at the masthead. At the helm of the Princess Alice was a substitute sailor, John Eyres, who had taken over the wheel at Gravesend, replacing the regular helmsman who had been given the evening off by the Captain. Progress up river was completely uneventful, passengers enjoying the experience of seeing the riverside lights come on as the sun set. The SS Princess Alice steamed up Barking Reach and, approaching Tripcock Point, she met and passed the Spartan and the tug Enterprise, both on her starboard side. Shortly afterwards, the masthead lights of a steamer came in sight over the point, and were seen on the port bow. As the Princess Alice rounded Tripcock Point, the band struck up ‘Nancy Lee’. Although it was getting quite dark, one passenger, a Mr Reed, later reported that he was able to read his watch - 7:35 - aided by the flares from the Beckton gas works on the north shore.

The Bywell Castle The Newcastle registered Bywell Castle was a 890 ton collier, nearly four times heavier than the Princess Alice. She had left Millwall at 6:30 that evening loaded with water ballast and was sailing with the ebb tide for her home port. Her captain and part owner was Thomas Harrison. Although he had spent many years at sea, he was unfamiliar with the Thames; and had taken the pre- caution of hiring a river pilot, Christopher Dix. His crew totalled 22. Pilot Dix had already manoeuvred the ungainly vessel down the seven miles to Gallions Reach. The ship was riding high in the water and the screw and rudder had little bite. She was running at half speed, and despite the impetus of the ebbing tide, her five and a half knots was still less than half that of the approaching Princess Alice. Captain Harrison and Pilot Dix were on the bridge of the Bywell Castle and, despite having the setting sun in their eyes, spotted the paddle steamer when she was still over half a mile away, her mast light shining over the intervening 3 Pleasure Cruise to Tragedy spit of land as the two vessels approached the bend of Trlpcock Point. The Princess Alice appeared to be coming across his bow, making for the north side of the river, seeking the slack water at Gallions Point, as they supposed. The pilot altered course accordingly, intending to pass safely astern of her. It was then that the passenger steamer suddenly changed course directly into the path of the oncoming collier. However, another way of looking at it was sketched by the Princess Alice’s acting helmsman, who deposed that it was the force of the ebb tide that had pushed her out towards the North shore as she came round Tripcock Point, and that he was in the process of turning and moving southwards to the centre of the stream to regain her bearing when the collision occurred. Whichever explanation you choose to believe, the two vessels had embarked on a collision course at such close quarters that there was nothing either of them could do to avoid the other. Sounding his siren, Captain Harrison ordered the engines of the Bywell Castle be stopped, then reversed at full speed. But the Bywell Castle carried on with the current and tide, and the bows of the collier struck the steamer just forward of the starboard paddlebox, almost cutting her in two. The Bywell Castle hesitated, then bumped into the paddle steamer again, her iron keel forcing the bows under water. S e c o n d s l a t e r , h u n d r e d s o f p a s s e n g e r s f o u n d themselves in water u p t o t h e i r n e c k , s c r e a m i n g a n d shouting in panic. As the Bywell Castle’s last order (full astern) came into effect, T h a m e s w a t e r inundated the paddler a n d w i t h i n f o u r minutes, she had sunk. Gazing down into the blackness, the crew of the Bywell Castle could hear the shrill screams of the drowning passengers. As well as launching her boats, the crew hastily threw ropes, planks, crates - anything and everything that would float - onto the gasping swimmers. Our time-conscious Mr Reed was able to grab a floating plank and, supporting his wife with his other hand, managed to hold on until they were pIcked up by a small boat. The Reeds were atypically lucky. Women and children who had sought the comfort of the paddler’s saloon stood little chance. Steward William Law was below deck when the collision occurred. He rushed up onto the deck to find it awash already. “Come 4 Pleasure Cruise to Tragedy up on deck, we’re sinking”, he screamed down into the ship and, grabbing a girl, jumped overboard. She slipped away from his grasp as he swam away and sank beneath the surface. Many of the ropes cast down as lifelines became death-lines. As one floundering, screaming victim caught at a rope’s end, so another victim would cling desperately to him. Then another and another would do the same, forming a human chain. The result was inevitable. The victim holding the rope’s end would weaken under the strain, let go, the human chain would break and the river would claim more victims. Many passengers clinging to the links of the Bywell Castle’s anchor chain were lost when someone on the collier gave orders for the anchor to be dropped. Nevertheless some were dragged to safety aboard the collier, and a few strong swimmers did make it to the river bank. A few passengers managed to climb up the funnels of the sinking vessel, getting burned in the process, but making it safely over the bows of the Bywell Castle. Philip Hilson was so close to the collision point that his right hand was crushed; however, he was able to grab a rope thrown down from the collier, and be hung on as the Princess Alice dropped away from beneath him, his wife desperately clutching him round his neck, her legs dangling in space. Slowly, he pulled himself up the rope and actually had his knee on the Bywell Castle's gunwale when his wife cried: “I can't hold on any longer.” She dropped into the river, never to be seen again. Only a tiny number of random rivermen had witnessed the collision and were able to row to the rescue. “The passengers were floating round like bees, making the water black with hats and coats” said one, adding that the long hair of the many drowning women made an indelible impression on him. Panicking, desperate passengers grabbed the gunwales of his already overloaded boat threatening to capsize it, and they had to be beaten off with oars. It was a full 10 minutes before any sizeable vessel, the paddle steamer Duke of Teck, arrived, but by then there was no-one left still swimming. In total just 69 people were pulled from the waters alive. For some time, the residents of remained unaware of what was happening on the river, despite the incessant wailing of the Bywell Castle’s siren. First news was brought ashore by a sweating waterman, who arrived with his small dinghy carrying five dripping survivors, and, covered by a tarpaulin, four corpses. As more small boats from both North and South Woolwich arrived with shocked survivors, and more bodies, Woolwich Town Hall was made into a temporary mortuary. Bodies of the drowned began turning up on both shores as the nightmare flotsam spread - parasols, hats and coats, dolls and toys, even some of the band's musical instruments. The boatmen were offered five shillings for each body they recovered, resulting in fights over their grisly catches. 5 Pleasure Cruise to Tragedy

Many of the dead, of course, were not discovered until the raising of the fore and aft parts of the Princess Alice four days later, a morbid operation that was watched by large contingents of sightseers who poured into the area by rail, road and steamer. Monday 9th September saw funeral services in Woolwich and the burial of the 120 unidentified bodies in a mass grave in Woolwich Old Cemetery - a large granite Celtic cross commemorates them there. The crowds of excursionists down from London clambered over the wreckage, and anything that “could be chipped or wrenched off was carried off as curiosities by visitors”. Two policemen had to be stationed by the wreck to curtail this ghoulish behaviour. Conscious of the recent history of the steamer, the hard-headed London Steamboat Company negotiated an insurance buy-back of the wreck, salvaged the ‘nearly-new’ boilers and engines and then broke up the rest. The actual death toll can never be known - I have read 590, 640 and 700 in different sources. Some bodies were believed swept out to sea on the fast ebb tide, or sucked down into the Thames ‘mud’. The fact that no tickets were required (or issued) for young children meant that no accurate count of passengers on board existed. However, Queen Victoria expressed her royal sympathy, and a relief Fund was opened by the Lord Mayor of London. Two hundred and forty children had been orphaned. Out of 50 old ladies in a Bible Class on excursion, only one had been saved! In a world still ignorant of napalm, barrel bombs and extermination camps, the press had a field day of speculation, hand-wringing and finger-pointing. How could two sizeable vessels with the river to themselves run head-on into each other? At that point the river was a third of a mile wide whilst the combined width of the two vessels was only 18 Yards! Were the Captains asleep? Was either of them negligent? Did the pilots - if there were any - know their jobs? Had drink been taken? How could a vessel as big as the Princess Alice sink in four minutes? The questions came thick and fast.

The Inquest Mr J. C. Carttar, coroner for West Kent, presided over the inquest at Woolwich Town Hall. It turned out to be a long and bitter affair, punctuated by allegations and counter-allegations of drunkenness and misbehaviour by the captain and crew of the Bywell Castle. Even the nineteen jurymen did not escape scrutiny. They were locked up all night to force a verdict, and ended up hung when four of them, including the foreman, refused to sign up to the majority verdict. To be fair, they had had to hack their way through a jungle of alien nautical terms.

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Mr Carttar decided that the body of the first person identified, William Beachey, a 45-year-old stockbroker’s clerk (who had gone down to Gravesend by train that afternoon for the pleasure of the boat ride back) was to be the subject of the inquest. Any conclusions as to the cause of his death could be applied to all the victims. The crux of the matter was which vessel had been at fault in not following the correct course. Should one have given way to the other? Captain Grinstead would have been a crucial witness, but he was dead. Captain Harrison knew which vessel had been following the correct course - his own!

Evidence from Princess Alice Interrogation of the surviving crew members of the Princess Alice revealed a profound ignorance of navigation rules and seamanship. The second mate, Ralph Wilkinson, said he had no fixed point of duty, did not know where the ships were at the time of the collision, did not know if there had been a lookout, and as the coroner sarcastically remarked. “seemed literally to know nothing" . The first mate, George Thomas Long, who had been on the river for more than 20 years, only appeared to have superficial knowledge of the 'rules of the road’ as they were called, and didn't know the relevant Thames Conservancy Regulation rule on how to avoid a collision - ‘Port your Helm’. For the benefit of any landlubbers reading this, the phrase "port your helm" refers to the use of a tiller. In helm orders, and one has to recall that all ships were once steered by a tiller (or lever arrangement), if one puts the tiller over to port (left), the rudder and consequently the ship's head will veer round to starboard (right). Therefore the helm order "port" meant that the ship was to turn to starboard. Much later, after steam and steam steering became almost universal, helm orders were changed by international agreement, whereby "port" meant only "turn to port". The helmsman, John Eyres, gave his vital testimony. He was a substitute helmsman having only taken over at Gravesend, replacing one of the regular hands, Hopgood, who wanted a night out. The captain had agreed to this, and Hopgood was to have paid him his four shillings wages. Although he was a competent seaman, Eyres was unfamiliar with the Thames, and had not steered as big a vessel before. For the first part of the journey, he assisted another crewman, Rand, and only took over control at Erith, aided by his brother-in-law Creed (who had drowned). We are told that the (probably terrified) Eyres was an unsatisfactory witness and changed his testimony several times. His description of the phrasing of his orders changed. Sometimes it was "Hold on to your starboard helm" and

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“Hard-a-starboard". The only point on which he never wavered was that he had never received an order to port the helm, the accepted procedure to avoid a head-on collision. He admitted that the force of the tide coming round the point had taken them off to starboard as they came round but stated that he had overcome that a good two minutes before the collision.

Evidence from Bywell Castle Captain Harrison, commander of the Bywell Castle for three and a half years, was as clear as Eyres had been unclear. He had first seen the Princess Alice at a distance of three quarters of a mile, going uptide faster than the Bywell Castle was going down. "We could have gone over to the north shore, but obeyed the rule of the road and took the south course” he said. “I saw the Princess Alice coming out from behind the point and run into midstream and thought she was getting across in order to avail herself of the slack tide on the north shore, which would have been good seamanship." His pilot ported a little. 'To Captain Harrison's great surprise, the Princess Alice turned, having starboarded her helm and came across his course so quickly that he had not had the slightest chance of avoiding a collision. The pilot, Christopher Dix, who had actually been giving the orders, had a Trinlty House Certificate. Although he had 30 years' experience of Thames navigation, hIs certificate was limited to only as far downstream as Gravesend, and then for "exempt ships - (vessels "which didn't necessarily have to have a pilot”). It was revealed that Dix had once sunk a barge in a collision, and, ignoring his distance restriction, had run aground on the Goodwins in a snowstorm! Dix said that he had come down the centre of the river "as there was no reason not to" and that about a quarter of a mile down the reach he had had seen the red and masthead lights of a steamer over the point. When the other vessel cleared Tripcock she appeared to be making for the North shore. Dix claimed that he had only seen the Princess Alice’s red port light as she crossed the river. As he came close enough to make out her saloon lights, he gave the order to port a little. He then realised that he had lost the saloon lights too quickly, so he ordered "stop her" and "hard-a-port" as the Princess Alice seemed to be hauling in much too close to him. The last thing he did was to telegraph "full speed astern" but this order was not obeyed (the first and second engineers had in fact left the engine room to help save lives).

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Demon Drink Allegations that both the captain and the pilot had been drunk were meticulously examined by the coroner. A stoker from the Bywell Ca s t l e h a d previously made loud public statements accusing both of them, but at the inquest he retracted his allegations. The chief engineer of the Bywell Castle; testified that it was the stoker himself who had been the worse for drink when he came aboard. So drunk, in fact, that he had actually passed out.

Verdict The inquest finished on November 13, after some two months, 116 witnesses and three quarters of a million words. At last, the jury reached a verdlct, although it was so repellent to four of the nineteen - including the foreman - that they refused to sign the document. The majority verdict was as follows: "The death of the said William Beachey and others was occasioned by drowning in the waters of the from a collision that occurred, after sunset between a steam vessel called the Bywell Castle and a steam vessel called the Princess Alice, whereby the Princess Alice was cut in two and sunk, such a collision not being wilful.” They thought that the Bywell Castle had not taken the necessary precaution of easing, stopping and reversing her engines in time, and that the Princess Alice contributed to the collision by not stopping and going astern. The jury added, to scotch any rumours that might be flying round, that the Princess Alice had been perfectly seaworthy on the day of the collision, but they also added three harsh criticisms: ✤ She was not properly and sufficiently staffed. ✤ The numbers of persons on board were more than prudent. ✤ The means of saving life were insufficient for a boat of her class. Finally, the jury recommended that “all collisions might in future be avoided if proper and stringent rules and regulations were laid down for all steam navigation on the River Thames”. And if all men were honest and peaceful, we would not need gaols.... In spite of this, jury foreman Sydney Harrlngton told the court that he and three other jurymen wished to be dissociated with the verdict, as they considered the fault entirely due to the Princess Alice.

The Board of Trade Inquiry

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Running concurrently with the inquest was a Board of Trade investigation, headed by John Balguy, a magistrate from Greenwich, in front of three naval assessors. The assessors twice visited the scene of the disaster, and one of them actually travelled on a sister ship of the Princess Alice. They were appalled to see ships passing each other on either side, oblivious of all regulations, as though the river were a dodgem track. Despite this, and prior to the inquest verdict, the Board of Trade put the whole blame for the accident on the Princess Alice.

Why Such a Death Toll? In the 1870s, the facilities available for the urban general public to go swimming were extremely limited, for women in particular. It is estimated that only five per cent of Londoners at that time could swim, and the hundreds of non-swimmers who were flung into the water in their heavy Victorian clothing stood little chance of survival. Secondiy, there was the condition of the river itself. It seems that some of the passengers hadn't drowned but were poisoned. The Thames Conservancy Board analyst G. W. Wigner took numerous river samples, and reported that the Gallions Reach section of the Thames was one of the most heavily polluted in the country: “At high water, twice in 24 hours, the flood gates of the outfalls are opened when there is projected into the river two continuous columns of decomposed fermenting sewage, hissing like soda water with baneful gases, so black that the water is stained for miles and discharging a corrupt charnel house odour”. Lovely!

Postscript Nearly one hundred and eleven years later, In the early hours of 20th August 1989 near Cannon Street Railway Bridge, another lightly built pleasure boat full of young merrymakers – the Marchioness – sank when she was cut through by a steel-built ship thirty times her displacement, the dredger Bowbelle. Of 130 people on board the Marchioness, 51 were drowned. Factors identified later included the lack of lookouts on either vessel and excessive drink. Despite the recommendations of the Princess Alice inquest jury in 1878, history had tragically repeated itself.

sources Hugh Darrington’s articles from 1978 and ‘Riverpedia’

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